More planes need more places to land and take off. So China has plans to build 82 new airports and expand more than 100 existing ones by 2015, according to Forbes.

That kind of growth is unprecedented, especially when you consider the fact that at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1950, many of the country's airports were in shambles. Only 200 planes were left in the country — total — according to James Fallows' book "China Airborne."

Chongqing (as it's spelled today) is now a major city, and home to the Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport, which handled nearly 16 million passengers in 2010. The mountains in the background are the same, but the runway is in much better shape: